HOW TO KEEP NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
For Real, This Time
New Year’s Eve has come and gone, and now that the champagne is finished and the decorations are put away, it’s time to buckle down and work on those New Year’s resolutions. The only problem is ... your resolutions for this year and last year are the same. Change is tough, so you’re not alone in being unable to stick to your resolutions. This year can be different, if you want it to be. Here are some tips to keep you on track. Have a specific goal. Many resolutions are vague — along the lines of “exercise more” or “eat healthier.” That’s too ambiguous to inspire motivation, and vagueness leaves room for excuses. Make your goal more concrete so you can measure your success. Specific goals could include going to the gym three times a week, being able to bench a certain number of pounds, or only indulging in fast food once a month. Make your goal realistic — if it’s too drastic or difficult, it’s easier to give up. Have a plan. Bad habits are hard to break, so change won’t come naturally. It’s important to consider how you’ll structure your day around your resolution and what obstacles you might face. When will you go to the gym, and what will you do if that time is interrupted? How will you plan meals to avoid spontaneous drive-thru visits? Write down what you want to accomplish and all the things that might
stand in your way. Then, figure out how you’ll deal with them before they happen.
Start small. On Jan. 1, you’re probably enthusiastic about your resolution and ready to hit the ground running. Not so
fast — doing too much too soon is a classic mistake. It’s okay to be excited, but working out until you’re sore all over or constantly eating salads you hate will turn your resolution into a chore you’ll want to avoid. Start with light workouts or replacing some of your carbs with veggies. Once you get the hang of that, you’ll be ready to scale up slowly. Using these guidelines, you’ll make lasting changes that extend beyond February. Get 2022 started off on the right foot, and next year, you’ll be ready to make a whole new resolution — and keep it.
National Hobby Month
THE BEAUTY OF ART
I’ll preface this by saying that my wife and I have different hobbies. She loves to get in the garden and tinker around, and I’ve just never enjoyed it — I find it to be merely manual labor. The feeling must stem from my allergy to freshly cut grass when I was growing up. While I loved playing
up some techniques that I took with me to college. In that class, I completed one painting and gave it to my grandparents. It wasn’t that great, but they cherished it and had it hanging in their living room above the couch for years! The painting I’m most proud of, however, was a Dutch master- technique painting of an apple and a pear. Today, it’s hanging in my mom’s home. Other paintings I did are scattered throughout my home in my closet, basement, garage, and even in my son’s room. My staff often teases me as, during patient consultations, I fat- finger some depictions of procedures. I often find myself asking for forgiveness from my patients as I’m much more accurate with my precision instruments than trying to draw on a tablet with my finger — I promise. My second son has a great artistic natural gift, and we both have our eyes peeled for any painting classes we can do together as a father/son bonding experience. I look forward to hopefully finding something to rekindle the passion!
sports, if the grass was freshly cut, I’d wheeze and huff and puff, but I always powered through it. Today, I just don’t want to garden in my free time, but as a way to spend time with her, I do it anyway. A hobby of mine that I’m itching to get back into is painting. Back in high school and college, I used to draw and paint often. As my career picked up, I got away from it. But you could say that I still exercise my artistic side in the operating room, more as a sculptor than a painter.
Back in high school, I took a Bob Ross painting class in which you’d complete an entire painting in 30 minutes. Needless to say, I picked
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